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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, seen here in September, is facing a united opposition in Sunday's election that threatens his grip on power. Andrej Isakovic/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, seen here in September, is facing a united opposition in Sunday's election that threatens his grip on power.

When Turkish citizens head to the polls on Sunday, they will vote in one of the most pivotal elections in their country's 100-year history. That's because for the first time in 20 years, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces a united opposition threatening his grip on power.

Turkey, a NATO ally on the border between Europe and Asia, has experienced a decade of democratic backsliding as Erdogan has methodically consolidated all branches of government under his authority. Experts say Sunday's election will determine whether Turkey can return to democratic rule or will continue its path toward an autocracy.

"Erdogan is the inventor of nativist, populist politics globally, and his defeat would mean something globally," said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute.

The threat to Erdogan's reign comes amid an economic and financial crisis that has been compounded by deadly earthquakes this year. Erdogan and his ruling AK Party have received much of the blame for the economic situation.

Furthermore, alleged corruption and negligence that led to building code and safety violations may have contributed to higher death tolls from the earthquakes, according to a preliminary report from scientists at Middle East Technical University in Ankara.

"Had the earthquake not happened, Erdogan would probably be leading in the polls today," Cagaptay said.

The irony that an earthquake and economic crisis could bring down Erdogan is not lost on those who have followed his political rise. It was a 1999 earthquake that killed 17,000 people that helped elevate his profile and catapulted him and his party to victory in the 2002 general election.

"It's a parallel that almost every Turkish person made in the first days after this earthquake in February," said journalist and writer Suzy Hansen, who lived and reported from Turkey for over a decade. "He was going to fix the economy, and he was going to eradicate corruption."

Erdogan is credited with expanding the Turkish middle class by making credit more easily available to those families. His government also embarked on massive infrastructure projects that provided lots of jobs. Gross domestic product per capita more than tripled during his first decade in office, from $3,600 in 2002 to $11,700 in 2012. He delivered growth, lifted people out of poverty and improved access to government services, such as health care.

Those successes over his first 10 years in power allowed him to build a loyal base of followers. But that base is starting to abandon Erdogan now as more and more middle-class families are struggling to make ends meet in today's Turkey. Runaway inflation and a currency devaluation have seen prices surge in recent years. In April, food prices increased 54% year on year.

"People are hungry in Turkey," Hansen said. "People cannot afford meat. They can't afford food. They can't afford diapers. They are really struggling."

Inflation has come down since reaching a high of more than 85% in October. The Turkish lira has lost 76% of its value during Erdogan's second term as president.

"People are angry," Hansen said. "I had one young man say to me, 'If you watch the Turkish news, which is controlled by Erdogan, all they're telling us is that life is great. And meanwhile, I can't afford onions.'"

But it's not just economic challenges that threaten Erdogan. It's also the political and cultural changes that he undertook during his second decade in power. Erdogan, who grew up in a poor conservative Muslim family in the Anatolian hinterland, always felt like a second-class citizen in Turkey's secular society, according to Cagaptay.

His rise to power in the early 2000s also led to the rise of political Islam in the country. Many in the majority-Muslim country remain loyal to Erdogan for making religion a bigger part of Turkish politics and society. At the same time, it alienated more progressive parts of society and those secularists who want to keep religion out of politics.

"Erdogan has demonized so many groups from secularists to Kurdish nationalists to liberals to social democrats to leftists," Cagaptay said. "When you add them up, that makes up about half of Turkey's population."

And those groups for the first time are now united in their opposition to Erdogan.

Similar to other authoritarian rulers, Erdogan has attempted to hold on to power by going after his opponents. He also started to centralize the government around himself. In 2017, Turkey transformed from a parliamentary system to a presidential one after 51% of voters approved the change in a public referendum.

This change came less than a year after a failed military coup in July 2016. More than 300 people died in the clashes between the military and Erdogan supporters during the coup attempt. Erdogan responded to the attempted overthrow of his government with mass arrests and large purges across the military, government and civil service.

"He became head of state, head of government, head of ruling party, head of the national police and head of the military as chief of staff. He became all powerful as Turkey's new sultan," Cagaptay said.

The change to this new presidential system means that for the first time, Erdogan has to win 50% of the vote. Going into Sunday's election, Erdogan and his main opponent, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, are neck and neck in the polls.

Should none of the candidates win more than 50% of the vote, then there will be a runoff election on May 28 between the top two candidates.

Cagaptay and Hansen both believe Erdogan won't go quietly if he loses the election.

He might even take a page out of former President Donald Trump's playbook and call on his supporters to stop any transfer of power.

"You could very well see the repeat of Jan. 6 in Turkey after the elections, if this is a closely contested race," Cagaptay said.

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As a Democrat, the fact that I would praise the politics of my adopted home state of South Carolina might surprise you. Republicans control near super-majorities in the state legislature, and the Palmetto State has not elected a Democratic governor or U.S. senator in more than a quarter-century.

Yet, as their right-wing peers in Florida, Tennessee and Georgia routinely wage culture wars that divide their citizens and rally Democratic voters across the country, South Carolinas leaders have provided a strong example of a third way, where logic and reason can unite people of different parties, races and beliefs to actually form a more perfect union and achieve shared goals.

In 2016, neighboring North Carolina passed H.B. 2, also known as "the Bathroom Bill'' into law, prohibiting transgender citizens from using public facilities aligned with their individual gender identity. In response, the state suffered serious financial consequences totaling billions in lost revenue as many businesses moved offices, investments and events out of North Carolina. The unpopularity of the policy also helped contribute to first-term GOP Gov. Pat McCrorys defeat later that year.

The U.S. and South Carolina flags (Kevin Ferris/Fox News Digital)

At the same time, then-Gov. Nikki Haley led opposition to similar legislation in South Carolina, which never passed the state Senate. Even more recently, the South Carolina Supreme Court solely elected by the Republican-controlled legislature struck down a bill that would have prevented abortion after six weeks. Today, in this very conservative state, most abortions are allowed up until 22 weeks. The author of the decision was one of the states first female jurists and the spouse of a Republican state legislator.

WHY THESE SEVEN WORDS OF SYMPATHY AFTER A TRAGEDY DESERVE PRAISE NOT SCORN

Most recently, South Carolinas legislature has sought bipartisan consensus on some of the most controversial issues of our time. In 2022, while other Republican-led states battled with restrictive voter and ballot access laws, South Carolina unanimously adopted an election reform bill, H. 4919, that required each county to offer two weeks of in-person early voting for at least six days a week before an election or runoff and no longer required an excuse like being out of state or having a disability to early vote. For Republicans wary of election security, it also included voter ID and installed ballot security measures.

While curriculum battles rage in a number of states, especially in Florida, just last week a bipartisan majority on the South Carolina Senate Education Committee sent a consensus education bill to the floor with broad support. The shockingly non-controversial bill essentially allows teachers to teach, and allows a statewide process for parents to object, at a local level, to content they may deem problematic.

For instance, in the South Carolina bill, there are no bans on teaching about slavery or the Holocaust or books being removed en masse from library shelves. Parents no longer have carte blanche to sue teachers or districts, but the legislation does allow a process for complaints to be heard at the local level.

The State House, Columbia, South Carolina (Epics/Getty Images)

And even current language about what should (or should not) be taught in schools is pretty basic and something on which most reasonable people can agree: homosexuality in the context of health classes at age appropriate levels is allowed, but pornographic materials are not.

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When it comes to library content, the legislation is quite simple: let local school boards decide, with an emphasis that books should be age appropriate for the kind of school, as guided by the state Department of Education a department overseen by a Republican elected statewide by voters, with a state Board of Education elected by the state legislature.

There is no question that the Palmetto State still has room to become an even better place, especially for a northern transplant like me. For instance, the state remains one of only two states without a hate crimes legislation bill even as legislation has continually passed the House but has been stuck awaiting approval in the state Senate.

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However, as states across the country become more acrimonious, they should look to ruby-red South Carolina as an example of the comity, decency and bipartisan compromise needed in our American legislative process.

When progressive Democrats and MAGA Republicans can agree unanimously, in the former cradle of the Confederacy, on issues ranging from voting rights and ballot access to school curriculum, maybe, just maybe, there is hope for other states, and our leaders in Congress, too.

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Why this Democrat believes a Republican state can be a model for the country - Fox News

Pentagon leaks 2023

Chair of Senate intelligence committee addresses Pentagon leaks and says central entity should oversee classification process

Reuters in Washington

Sun 23 Apr 2023 12.45 EDT

Too many people have access to the US governments closest secrets and a central entity should oversee the classification process, the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee said on Sunday, addressing leaks of documents in an online chat group.

A US air national guardsman was charged on 14 April with leaking classified documents on the Discord platform.

It is believed to be the most serious US security breach since more than 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables appeared on the WikiLeaks website in 2010.

On Sunday, Mark Warner, a Democratic senator from Virginia, told ABCs This Week that once we get to that highest level of classification, we maybe have too many folks taking a look at them, over 4 million people with clearances.

The senators powerful position gives weight to his recommendations as Joe Bidens administration examines the handling of intelligence and looks for ways to clamp down on future leaks.

The US has numerous intelligence-gathering entities and Warner said the situation needed to be dealt with.

We need somebody fully in charge of the whole classification process and I think for those classified documents there ought to be a smaller universe, he said.

As an example, Warner said the National Security Agency has suffered leaks in the past notably including the disclosures by Edward Snowden in 2013 and internal controls now limit the copying of documents.

The Pentagon has called the latest leak a deliberate, criminal act.

Warner also said that not everyone handling a document needs to see the whole document and that just seeing the header could be enough.

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Limit access to US secret documents, Democrat says in response to leaks - The Guardian US

Recently, House and Senate Republican and Independent leaders sent a letter to Senate President Rob Wagner and House Speaker Dan Rayfield asking for an equal bipartisan and bicameral Joint Committee on Oversight and Accountability. The letter includes the names of those who would serve as Republican and Independent members of the 12-person equal committee.

The letter reads as follows:

Dear Presiding Officers,

As you may know, House and Senate Republican and Independent leaders sent letters in March and April urging the Governor to launch independent, nonpartisan investigations into the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commissions (OLCC) (1) potential favorable treatment of land acquisitions; (2) alleged rare liquor distribution; (3) process of granting retail licenses. In response, the Governor has said that the DOJs investigations will suffice. We disagree.

Today, Oregon House and Senate Republican and Independent leaders are calling on you, as presiding officers, to create an equal bipartisan and bicameral Joint Committee on Oversight and Accountability. Its first order of business should be to seek answers in the alleged actions of the OLCC.

The OLCCs actions have been greatly covered in the news over the past several months, with several allegations leading the public to believe this agency is corrupt. We must resolve these issues with full transparency.

We put forth the following names to serve as Republican and Independent members of the 12-person committee:

Senator Tim Knopp, Senate District 27

Senator Dick Anderson, Senate District 5

Independent Senator Brian Boquist, Senate District 12

Representative Vikki Breese-Iverson, House District 59

Representative Greg Smith, House District 57

Representative E. Werner Reschke, House District 55

We understand that in certain instances, investigations are being conducted by the Department of Justice. This is not sufficient. We must provide the standard of oversight and accountability that our Constitution and the people of Oregon expect. We ask that you take immediate action by creating this committee today.

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Democrat Leaders urged to create a Joint Oversight and ... - Coos Bay World

Progressive victories in Wisconsin and Chicago have injected new momentum into the most liberal wingof the Democratic Party. Butthose recent electoral successes are masking deeper internal tensions over the role and influence of progressives in a party President Biden has been remaking in his moderate image.

Interviews with more than 25 progressive and moderate Democratic leaders and strategists including current and former members of Congress and directors of national and statewide groups revealed a behind-the-scenes tug of war over the partys policy agenda, messaging and tactics. As the party looks toward next years elections, its key constituencies have undergone a transformation. Once mostly white, working-class voters, Democrats now tend to be affluent, white liberals, Black moderates and a more diverse middle class.

On some fronts, progressives a relatively young, highly educated and mostly white bloc that makes up about 12 percent of the Democratic coalition and is the most politically active have made inroads. Their grass-roots networks, including several headed by Black and Latino leaders, have grown sharply since the heights of the widespread resistance to the Trump administration. Beyond the high-profile victories in Chicago and Wisconsin, they have won under-the-radar local and state races across the country. And many of their views have moved into the mainstream and pushed the government to expand the fight against child poverty, climate change and other social ills.

We as a movement helped articulate these things, to do these things, said Representative Pramila Jayapal, the Washington State Democrat who heads the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Yet at the same time, the activist left wing remains very much on the defensive.

The negotiations with the White House on some of the most sweeping legislation fell short of the bold, structural change many of their members sought. And progressives remain locked in an old debate with their moderate counterparts as well as themselves over how to communicate progressive ideas and values to voters at a time when slogans like defund the police have come under attack by Republicans and moderate Democrats.

In 2018, our party seemed to react to Donald Trump winning in 2016, and the reaction was to go further and further left, said Cheri Bustos, a former Illinois congresswoman who is a moderate and was a leader of the House Democrats campaign arm. When politics swings far to the left or far to the right, there always seems to be a reckoning.

As Mr. Biden has signaled that he plans to run for re-election in 2024, he has been emphasizing the moderate roots he has embodied throughout much of his roughly 50 years in politics. He has replaced a key ally of the left in the White House Ron Klain, Mr. Bidens former chief of staff with Jeffrey D. Zients, who some progressive groups see as too friendly to corporate interests. And he has been clashing with activists who have accused him of backsliding on his liberal approaches to crime, statehood for the District of Columbia, climate issues and immigration policy.

Progressive is a label that encompasses various factions within the American left and can mean different things to different people. Broadly, progressives tend to believe the government should push for sweeping change to solve problems and address racial and social inequities. Like moderate and establishment Democrats, they support strong economic and social safety net programs and believe the economic system largely favors powerful interests.

But points of tension emerge between moderates and progressives over tactics: Progressives tend to call for ambitious structural overhauls of U.S. laws and institutions that they see as fundamentally racist over incremental change and more measured policy approaches.

In an interview with the socialist political magazine Jacobin, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, one of the most prominent progressive Democrats in the House, highlighted the tension by criticizing the president for making a lurch to the right.

I think it is extremely risky and very perilous should the Biden administration forget who it was that put him over the top, she told the magazine, referring to the high turnout in the 2020 presidential election of young people and communities of color.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is the rare Democratic member of Congress to publicly criticize the president. Several other progressives said they had accepted their role as having a seat at the table, though not necessarily at the head of it. Some said they believed Mr. Biden would serve as a bridge to new generation of progressive leaders, even if for now they are caught in a waiting game.

Right now, the progressives are sort of building power it is like a silent build that is just going to explode in a post-Biden world, said Representative Ro Khanna of California, a co-chairman of Senator Bernie Sanderss 2020 presidential campaign. I just cant conceive of a situation where progressives arent dominating presidential elections over the next 15 years after Biden.

The victories in Wisconsin and Chicago followed a similar playbook: Thousands of volunteers knocked on doors, made calls, wrote postcards, fired off mass texts and canvassed college campuses. They shied away from slogans and divisions among Democrats and emphasized the threat of an anti-democratic, Trumpian movement on the right. They turned out diverse coalitions of voters.

In Chicago that allowed progressives to propel Brandon Johnson, a once little-known county commissioner and union organizer, to clinch a narrow victory in the mayors race over his more conservative Democratic opponent, Paul Vallas, who ran on a tough-on-crime platform and was endorsed by a police union. In Wisconsin, where Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge, won a high-stakes race for a seat on the states Supreme Court, it allowed Democrats to lean into issues that the establishment wing of the party once tended to avoid in Republican and heavily contested areas: increased access to abortion and collective bargaining rights.

I couldnt feel more proud or feel more vindicated that the type of politics we argued for are where more Americans are at, said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, a grass-roots organization that often works with progressive Democrats and mobilized voters in Chicago and Wisconsin.

Progressives have also been increasing their ranks in other places. Members of their wing now hold the mayors office in Los Angeles and a majority on the board of aldermen in St. Louis. They have swept into statehouses in Colorado, Connecticut and Wisconsin, where two Democratic Socialists this year revived a socialist caucus inactive since the 1930s. At the federal level, the Houses Congressional Progressive Caucus added 16 new members, bringing the total number of the organization to 102 one of the largest ideological caucuses in Congress.

But as they build their organizing power, progressives are contending with a financial framework at the mercy of boom-and-bust cycles. Major gifts from donors or progressive attention to a cause du jour can draw sudden revenue windfalls and then dry out. In the Trump years, some grass-roots groups had explosive growth as progressives rushed to combat Trump policies, elevate a younger and more diverse crop of candidates and help fuel a national reckoning with racism. By the 2022 midterms, some progressive candidates and groups were having to rewrite budgets, considering laying off staff members and triaging outreach programs and advertising as donations slowed.

In Georgia, the Asian American Advocacy Fund, which focuses on mobilizing Asian American voters, went from having six full-time employees and a budget of roughly $95,000 in 2018 to a staff of 14 and a budget of $3 million in 2022. Its executive director, Aisha Yaqoob Mahmood, said the boom allowed the group to run better programs but also made those projects harder to sustain when donations ran low. The group was among several in swing states that struggled in 2022 to get political canvassing efforts off the ground as major Democratic donors cut back on their political giving.

We lost momentum, and we lost the vast majority of people who tuned into politics and tuned into elections, many maybe for the first time in their lives, because there was this villain who needed to be defeated, Mrs. Yaqoob Mahmood said.

Political analysts also warned against reading too much into progressive gains in areas that already lean liberal. During the midterms, the candidates who won tough midterm contests in purple places like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada largely adopted more moderate positions. And more progressive nominees who beat moderates in a number of House primaries lost in the general election.

The whole name of the game is creating a majority, and the majority makers are the moderates, said Matt Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way, a centrist organization. Referring to progressives, he said: They can win occasionally. But for the most part, they lose because what theyre selling isnt what Dems want to be buying.

As Mr. Trump vies for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, with multiple investigations hanging over his campaign, both moderate and progressive Democrats said they were forming a united front against a common foil and on issues where there is less division within their party, like abortion and protecting democracy. But for progressives, that has still meant a delicate dance about who they are.

In Pennsylvania, John Fetterman, successfully campaigning for Senate last year, argued that he was not a progressive but just a Democrat. In Virginia, Jennifer McClellan, who became the first Black woman to represent the state in Congress, has called herself a pragmatic progressive, emphasizing her decades of working across the aisle.

The stakes are especially high for progressives in Arizona, where a fierce race is expected over Senator Kyrsten Sinemas seat, after she left the Democratic Party in December to become an independent. Ms. Sinema flipped a Republican-held seat by hewing to the center and relying on progressive groups that turned out a large coalition of Democratic and independent voters.

Now, Representative Ruben Gallego of Phoenix, a member of the progressive congressional caucus, is running for the seat.

In some ways, Mr. Gallego is a bona fide progressive. He has been promoting policies like expanding affordable health care, enacting a permanent child tax credit and increasing wages. In other ways, he is reluctant to openly embrace the progressive brand, preferring instead to talk about his vision for Arizona or his experience as a Marine combat veteran and former construction worker as a way to help bring those working-class Latinos who now vote Republican back into the Democratic fold.

Asked if he sees himself as a progressive, Mr. Gallego said, I see myself as someone who has been a worker and a fighter for working-class families. He added, We are not going to be focusing on D.C. labels.

Susan Campbell Beachy contributed research.

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For Progressive Democrats, New Momentum Clashes With Old ... - The New York Times